


The One To Take Home To Mother (So You Can Build A Scythe Together)

by Not_You



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Death, Coming of Age, Foster Care, Gender Roles, Ghosts, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Talking To Dead People, Wakes & Funerals, again kind of, kind of, stereotypes about magical abilities that are so widespread they're basically gender stereotypes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:37:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5560216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some time ago, my friend linked me to this post:</p><p>I just had the world’s most amazing fandom dream, where the artificial concept drawing people into state-mandated relationships was not D/s or A/B/O or whatever, but rather <i>ghost hunting</i> and who could fight ghosts had to be paired with who could communicate with them (no one was both) and the rituals involved making a scythe to prove devotion.</p><p>It makes no sense whatsoever and I do not care one bit.</p><p>
  <i>I would read a billion words of this AU.</i>
</p><p>Random tumblrite, I am writing this.  I hope you find it.</p><p>The life and times of one Alex Summers, in the world described above.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Alex is expecting to be a Hunter. Tall and strong and always getting into fights from the cradle up, it seems like a natural progression for him, just like Scott is probably totally gonna be a Whisperer when he grows up. So when Alex watches the clock switch from 11:59 to 00:00 on the morning of his fourteenth birthday he's expecting a flush of warmth and the slight visual change Hunters talk about, to see all the currents of life force around him.

Instead, there's a quiet susurration in the background or inside his skull and suddenly he can hear his parents. Nothing hostile can get into the house, so it really must be them. Anywhere with kids is warded out the ass, and a decent group home has even more than usual, but it's still a hell of shock. 

He starts to cry, and hears his mother say, “Don't, dear. We're here to make sure that you and your brother get a good start.”

Ever since the Unification the world has been full of ghosts, but most of the decent ones move on quickly unless they have unfinished business. Even now, scared and embarrassed to have turned out to be a Whisperer, he's glad to hear his parents, to know that he and Scott are their unfinished business.

They sound so close, but he can't see or feel anything, of course. Whisperers hear, Hunters see, and touch hardly ever happens to anyone. Mom and Dad spend the night with him, their voices only fading when the sun comes up. It's harder to manifest by daylight, and they need to save their energy for when Scott's time comes.

Once people are actually awake, Alex goes and tells the house mom that he's a Whisperer. The house mom here is really good, a big fat lady who wears really old fashioned flowered housedresses and actually cares. She's a Whisperer too, of course, and she gives him a big smile and one of her lavender-scented hugs.

“Oh, Alex, honey, I'm so proud of you. We can start voice-warding as soon as you're ready.” She's also really good at not pushing, and Alex smiles back, feeling a little better.

“Thanks, Mama Rae,” he says, and lets her lead him into the kitchen for hot chocolate. It's early, and after he's done he helps her make breakfast for the house. Scott comes down before all the other kids, eyes looking anxious behind his big glasses. Alex smiles at him, glad the way he sometimes is that Scott is so old for his age. He won't have to hear any crap from his little brother about Whispering being for girls, even though Scott looks surprised when Alex tells him that's how it turned out.

“Oh, cool,” is all he says, though, setting the table without anyone asking him because that's the kind of kid he is. “Who did you hear?”

This is the moment when Alex realizes that maybe whispering is pretty cool. Because he can say, “Mom and Dad, and they're doing fine. They say they're gonna hang around until your turn, too.”

Scott beams, and Alex keeps the memory in mind as kids at school give him crap about being a Whisperer, and he has to not beat the shit out of them because if he gets in trouble Mama Rae worries, and he's not little and cute enough to be sent to therapy instead of juvie.

At least the voice-warding isn't much trouble. Alex has a knack for it, something else he wasn't expecting. He has no sense of pitch and isn't even much of a singer, but voice-warding is more about how the sound feels when you make it. There's the deep hum in the chest that sends a wave of calm through the aether, and the high tones resonating in the nose that map the aether like sonar maps the physical world. In between are all the others, all the wordless sounds that soothe and compel and repulse ghosts.

Mama Rae puts a blood-ward of her own onto Alex every time he leaves the home, and every time he's so glad that she cares. Her blood is strong and he's sure his own mother's couldn't work any better. One tiny droplet goes behind each ear, the way women wear perfume, and he hears nothing from the aether.

Every kid knows that there are terrible things in the aether. Extended family and other beloved ghosts wander there, but so do the wicked dead, and there are currents of memory and emotion, just as capable of being malign. Hunters at least have the option of fighting, and Alex is terrified when Mama Rae takes his hand and leads him unblooded beyond the wards for the first time since his birthday.

The sound is like leaves in the wind, and he stops on the sidewalk with his head tilted as if his physical ears will be of any help. As he gets used to it, layers start to separate out. There are voices greeting him politely, and there are songs and there is weeping. The sorrow in it troubles him, and almost without thinking about it he goes looking for the source. Mama Rae comes with him, of course.

The weeping is a woman's voice, and he finds the source two blocks from the home. It's a nice little red house, and he goes and knocks on the door because he has to. There are black mourning banners on the windows, and the man who answers the door looks a lot like Alex did after his parents died. He's a Hunter, and his eyes widen at the sight of them.

“Hello, sir,” Mama Rae says. “The boy and I hear weeping.”

“Oh, thank god,” he says, looking like he's about to cry. “Please, come in.”

Turns out he and his wife are both Hunters, and their three surviving kids are too young to be anything. The oldest was a Whisperer, and died two days ago of cancer. Her parents have been seeing her around the house with no way to be sure that it's her or to know how to help, and still too shattered to contact any of the agencies that provide professional Whisperers for situations like this.

Since Alex is the one learning, he gets to stand in the middle of the girl's room and sing the summoning tones that climb up from the heart and into the skull. Sure enough, she's right there. 

“You can hear me!” she says, and she sounds so relieved that Alex has to smile. Her voice is still watery and sad, but she doesn't sound helpless anymore. 

“Damn right, I hear you,” he says, still too untrained to speak to a ghost without involving his physical voice. “What's wrong, honey?”

She sniffles and tries for flippancy. “Well, I died a virgin, stuff like that,” she says, and Alex chuckles, trying not to be an asshole and really laugh in this house of grief. “But really,” the girl says, “I just feel bad that the last time I was conscious I was bitchy to Mom. I like, thought I might get another minute, y'know?”

“Yeah,” Alex says, “I know. I'm still pretty new, so I think you should use Mama's Rae's voice.”

There are a lot of types of possession, but letting a ghost use your voice is pretty basic and benign. Mama Rae goes to the girl's mother and that bright, young voice tells her mother that she loves her, that she was a wonderful mother and to please take good care of her little sisters no matter how bratty they get. She tells her father the same and whispers a secret goodbye to each of the sisters.

By the time Mama Rae and Alex leave, the house feels lighter, the dead daughter singing in the aether as her presence fades. Much as a child longs to live and grow, the young and the old have always been the closest to the veil, and Mama Rae says that she'll move on just fine.


	2. Chapter 2

Even with so much time since the Unification, humanity is still having a hard time putting their not-so-new senses and instincts into words. Hunters and Whisperers can be any sex or gender, but are easy to tell apart because they just _feel_ different, in a maddeningly ineffable way. Auras were hippie crap before, but now it's the easiest name. The aura of a Hunter kind of buzzes, and there's phantom heat to it along with a kind of Hunter smell that doesn't easily compare to anything else. People carry scents and tastes and tactile impressions that are really none of these things, and the lack of precise language for it can get frustrating.

The first Hunter to ever really feel Alex up is a gorgeous girl who shivers and moans as she tells him how slippery and cool he is, and that he tastes like rainwater. Her aura is crawling over his skin as he grabs her ass with both hands, and he finds himself muttering useless words into her neck, that she's like reverb and smoke and the feeling of thunder.

This first Hunter is far from the last, and even as Alex ages out and finds himself fucked up and incapable of finding a legitimate job, he can always find a Hunter. Never anything serious, just that addictive buzz of their aura, the complex feelings and those notes like blackberries and thunder and the burn of whiskey.

The first time Alex is attacked in his sleep, there's a Hunter in bed next to him, so when Alex starts screaming in a useless effort to drown out the horrible whispers, the guy jumps up and has his knife in a second, slashing at empty air. It would look ridiculous if Alex couldn't hear the creatures screaming and then blissful fucking silence, the aether clean again. It takes him a while to stop shivering, but his one-night stand is a decent guy, holding him and keeping him warm.

Ghosts can attack Hunters, but they have to be more roundabout, like subliminal messaging instead of outright assault. Alex is more sensitive than the average Whisperer, so he's quick on the uptake and the thin wards in his usual shitty accommodations are never really enough. Alex can never be sure when he'll be safe or not, and when enemies show up, he never knows which kind is worse. There are the spirits of evil humans, and then there are what people call monster ghosts, hideous things that never were human, lurking in the aether to prey on the living and the dead alike. 

It reaches the point where Alex is literally and platonically sleeping with Hunter friends so someone will be right there in case of attack, so it's not surprising when he drifts into the fucking underworld. Drugs can sensitize him too much, but they can also make the difference between sleeping through a monster ghost passing by and crying for hours. It's also easier to sleep by day, when the aether is quieter. Some fucked up, oversensitive Whisperers can't hold a job, but Alex is such a mess he can't even get hired. He spends his days asleep and his nights doped to the gills on whatever he can find, sleeping in the bed of whatever Hunter will have him there. The one constant in his excuse for a life is to always be able to find a Hunter. Drifting sideways from harmless drug abuse into armed robbery and then getting busted is a hell of a lot less surprising than getting out of jail and finding himself at a BFB building.

Alex has always thought that the Bond Facilitation Bureau was for losers, and maybe he still does. He's lost some swagger between prison time on its own and the side-effect of almost never seeing Scott and the after-effect of Scott being pissed at him, but he never thought he would be sitting here on a bench with a numbered ticket in his hand like he's at the fucking DMV. It feels like every Hunter he can find on his own these days either wants nothing to do with an ex-con, or is still a criminal mess themselves. It's exhausting and he's tired and miserable and fuck it, lonely. He basically has no one if Scott doesn't want to see him, so it's this or drinking until hooking up with a meth dealer just because she's a Hunter seems like a good idea. And Alex wants to see Scott again. The kid's gonna turn fourteen this year, and Alex wants to be there for him more than he has ever wanted anything.

After a goddamn eternity the receptionist calls him up. She's a cute little Whisperer, and so is the man who comes to collect him. He has floppy, curly brown hair that gives him a kind of puppyish aspect, and he beams up at Alex, looking a bit like a kid in his grandfather's clothes.

“Good afternoon!” he says, and holy hell, he's British, too.

“...Afternoon,” Alex mumbles, reminded of the nicer caseworkers from his childhood.

“I'm Charles Xavier, and I'll be managing your file with us.”

“Alex Summers,” Alex says, mostly in case Xavier has the wrong file in front of him. No way in hell did Alex take all those fucking tests for nothing.

“Of course,” Charles says. “Today we'll just be going over your file and your current plans.”

At least his office isn't totally lame. There's stuff for Alex to play with while he talks, glitter wands and little water-and-oil machines and a Slinky. He feels a little bit like he's still in play therapy after the plane crash, but it's nice to have something to do. At least Charles doesn't act like Alex is the only person in the history of the world to ever be a fuck-up. He just goes over everything and asks about Alex's current drug use, which is nil. The wards on prisons are some of the best, so the worst he had done in there was get drunk to relieve the boredom, and the wards on the halfway house are prison-quality, so Alex is actually pretty sober these days. It's nice to report something that makes Charles smile, since otherwise Alex is still pretty screwed up. Nightmares, no job prospects, and the foster system doesn't want to let him within a mile of his little brother.

“It's not even like I think I'd make a good housewife,” he says, “but a steady Hunter might help me like, get to the point where a person might hire me for something. I'm trying not to be all codependent, but seriously, I just got out of jail, do I have to apologize for being a little desperate?”

Charles laughs. “I think I would be too, Alex. And there are many Hunters here due to very high thresholds. It's best for a couple to have approximately the same sensitivity, and those so much higher or lower than the general population that most people they meet don't match make up a large portion of our clientele.”

“What are the rest of 'em here for?”

“Well, some are immigrants who need to find someone from a culture that feels the same way about ghosts as their culture of origin to be comfortable, and some are abuse survivors referred through Social Services, and we also offer counseling for existing bonds that are in trouble, as well as an ability-sharing service for same-dynamic couples.”

“And here I just thought you helped sad-sacks get laid,” Alex says. When Charles laughs at that, Alex knows that they'll get along.

Charles says that the first session is all about getting the paperwork in order and establishing a rapport, so that's what they do. Charles has dual citizenship between here and England, and he he has been married for three years. Everyone is on a continuum between dynamic and gender-based attraction, and like Alex, Charles has a preference for male and a goddamn burning need for Hunter. They spend most of their first appointment just talking, but at the end of it Charles sends Alex home with an actual worksheet on his preferred traits in a Hunter. He's supposed to bring it back the day after tomorrow, and after taking his turn to do the dinner dishes, he stretches out on his crappy institutional-grade mattress to get started on it.


	3. Chapter 3

It's pretty sad how homey the halfway house feels to Alex. It's just like foster care except that the kids who smoke are allowed to smoke, and that none of them are kids anymore. And that everyone has given up on making them not swear or stash pornography in their rooms. Otherwise, it's really about the same, especially for a guy like Alex, who has therapy and BFB sessions on top of the meetings with his PO and the job placement interviews that all the guys have. Hell, he even has homework to do.

At least the worksheet is different from the eight million fucking personality tests Alex had had to take after qualifying for free Bureau services. It has a similar structure to some of them, though, with the first portion consisting of four questions with those ranking bubbles to fill in to be read by some machine somewhere. Each one lists one of a Hunter's basic qualities and asks how important it is. Threshold gets a 5, Very Important, and a 1, Very Low. Alex has spent too many nights saying, “You seriously don't see _anything_?” to disbelieving Hunters to mark that any lower. Cultural Compatibility gets a 1, Not Important. He doesn't need anybody to remember to waft steam over his ancestors or to pray with him on the Day of the Dead or at any other time. 

He marks Secondary Sensory Contact with a 3, and then erases that and puts a 4. He's had some good times with sight-only Hunters, but it's nice to be with someone else who gets it, even if their sensory array is different. All Whisperers hear the dead and all Hunters see them, even those born deaf or blind, but a lot people gain some other impressions, usually smell, taste, or temperature. Alex has had all of them at one time or another, and has known more than one person with a constant secondary sense, or episodes of all three occurring simultaneously. Alex has also heard of overlap in the main ones, Whisperers seeing something like heat waves and Hunters hearing a low buzz, but he has never met any of them.

Finally, there's Aura Strength, which gets a 5, Very Strong, and a 4, Important. Generally, people gravitate to other people with auras that radiate at the same intensity, though some like to hide out in the field of a brighter aura, or to envelop a lesser one. Alex's aura is so strong that some people find it actively unpleasant, and he likes a partner somewhere near his power level if they can't match him. He's not sure how he would feel about being the weaker aura, but he has to assume that if it wasn't by too much, he wouldn't mind.

The rest of the questions are pretty dumb. They're about his goals and his hobbies and his values and all that shit. Alex has never been good at this kind of thing, and right now his goals consist of getting stable enough to hold a job, trying not to be a dick to anyone, and trying to be the kind of big brother Scott actually wants in his life. Not going back to jail is so obvious it barely counts. That's like having 'keep breathing' as a goal.

Before prison Alex's hobbies were fighting and fucking and getting completely wasted. In prison it was all about working out and memorizing Of Mice And Men and getting really really really good at cribbage. Now he has no fucking idea, so he casts his mind back to when he was a kid. What the hell had been doing then? Still getting into fights, but there had been other things. Eventually, Alex puts down 'actual martial arts (not just making trouble),' drawing, and basketball. His drawings are shit and by 'basketball' he means 'shooting hoops sometimes,' but it looks better to at least put something, however lame.

He's mostly done when Toad comes knocking on his door to tell him that he has a phone call from Scott. Alex hurriedly scribbles something down about just wanting to do right, and then crams the sheet into his backpack. “Coming!”

“That's what she said!” Toad cackles, and Alex rolls his eyes. No one is allowed to have a cellphone unless he needs it for work, so Alex has to go use the ancient fucking landline in the hallway, like it's goddamn 1952. Of course, he'd hang out the window by his dick if it was the only way to talk to Scott, but it still sucks to have to sit here in the too-small, scuffed plastic chair, wedging himself up against the shitty little table the phone is balanced on to keep himself out of the way.

“Alex?” The kid's voice cracks, making him sound more like the squeaky little kid Alex remembers than the young man he's becoming.

“Yeah, kid. What's up?”

“That's what I was going to ask you,” Scott says, wobbling a little and then settling into the beginning of a voice like their dad's.

“Not too much. I was just working on this BFB thing and I gotta see my PO tomorrow, prove I'm still doing good. See my shrink, same thing, and then on Wednesday I go back to the BFB. Oh, and I finally got my very own caseworker. He seems okay.”

“That's cool,” and god, it's so good to hear Scott sound like he actually means that. “I'm maybe gonna do track next year, and I got a B on the math test.”

“Hey, all right!”

“Should've been an A.”

“Kid, you're killin' me. Nobody in the family was ever any good at math, a B is fine.” He grins, picking up the pad and pencil for messages and doodling as he talks.

“You would say that,” Scott says, but sounds a little gratified.

“Yeah, I would. Am I invited to your birthday party yet?”

“...You have been pretty good about not screwing up, but remember, you have to _keep_ not screwing up. Go to all your meetings and sleep and eat and everything, okay?” He sounds way too serious, and Alex sighs, feeling terrible for being part of everything making his little brother grow up so fast.

“Hey. Kid. If you'll talk to me, I'll do whatever I have to.” The very worst part had been the silence, but Scott had been a really pissy twelve-year-old at the time and Alex doesn't hold it against him.

“Okay,” Scott says, sounding dangerously close to tears before opting to laugh instead. “Don't be a dick to the Hunters they set you up with.”

“Of course not,” Alex says, full of mock indignation. “I'll be a perfect fucking gentleman.” Scott laughs again, the sound music to Alex's ears. “I'll call you up and tell you all about it tomorrow, 'kay?”

“Okay,” Scott says. “Go finish your BFB thing.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Alex says, glad to leave Scott laughing.

He actually does get right back to work on the BFB form, but it's so hard to be honest, to be clear, and not to sound like a dickhead. Aside from family and stability, Alex isn't sure he has any fucking values right now, but he does his best, still scribbling on it in the van on the way over. One thing that really blows is not being able to drive himself anywhere, because of course he might plow off a bridge or run for Albuquerque or whatever. The guy they have today drives like somebody's grandma, but finally they reach the BFB building and Alex can hop out and head inside.

After only a few minutes of staring at the wall rather than read 'Highlights For Children' or mess with his fucking worksheet one more time, Charles comes out of the labyrinth of offices to call Alex back. He looks as frumpy and friendly as ever, and so pleased to see the completed worksheet that Alex wonders if he's making fun of him.


End file.
